


The Sensible Sort

by bomberqueen17



Series: The Lost Kings [3]
Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Baby Pictures, F/M, Family Negotiations, Gang Violence, Meeting the Parents, Pregnancy, Threats of Violence, it's abuse of the tag to call a surprise pregnancy Accidental Baby Acquisition but that's a tag, long-distance parenting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 04:47:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7877176
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bomberqueen17/pseuds/bomberqueen17
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At the end of his contract, Sento Bey comes out to where his daughter has been sending him contradictory and confusing messages, to find out just what's going on. And whether he's going to get to be a grandpa or not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sensible Sort

“You need me there, I can get there,” Sento Bey said, and the connection was terrible, no visual at all, but that voice through the glitching and scratching was undeniably his.

“Papa,” Shara said, starting to cry, but she squashed that shit _right_ down, there was no time for that. “No, Papa, I’m okay. I’m okay. It’s okay.”

“You don’t sound okay, sweet girl. Titaba said she’d release me with no penalty if I had to get out there to you, so I’m ready to go on your say-so.”

It was tempting. Titaba was the Essin clan’s matriarch, and was fond of the Beys, and was the reason they got as much steady work as they did without having joined the gang. “No,” Shara said, “it’s not that big an emergency, I just need to know what to do.”

“Your text stuff came out of order,” Sento said, “but I get the gist that you’re pregnant and he told you to fuck off. You got any more details?”

“Don’t need more details than that,” Shara said.

“So do you want it or not?” Sento asked. “I’ll be a grandpa right now or not, it’s not my decision. We can make it work either way, baby girl, but if he wants nothing to do with this then you better make sure he commits to that and doesn’t show up in ten years or so with lawyers once you’ve done all the hard work.”

“That could happen?” Shara felt sick, but then, she always felt sick now, so.

“You remember the shit when Lasae suddenly showed up? You were like nine, come to think of it. All full about what an unfit father I was and clearly you had to go with her?” Sento’s voice was rougher than usual. “Maybe you don’t remember, I tried to keep it away from you a little so you wouldn’t get scared.”

“I remember Lasae,” Shara said. Yeah, this woman who looked a little like her had suddenly shown up and been weirdly friendly, said she was Shara’s mother’s sister, but she’d stopped coming around after a while and they’d kept moving along. “Wait, she tried to take me?”

“Sure did,” Sento said. “And I’m not saying I was so well-suited to parenthood as all that, but at least I cared about who you were, you know? You weren’t just a bloodline and a pawn to me. She had some shit she was trying to pull and you were just leverage for her. Like, to add to a collection.”

“Shit,” Shara said.

“Anyway,” Sento said, “this is getting expensive. You want me to send over the legal papers and things I got? You could just switch out the details and reuse ‘em. I’m assuming from us still having this conversation that you want this baby, and that’s fine, my girl, but you gotta make up your mind and get your shit all lined up and ready.”

She hadn’t really made up her mind, but that right there did it for her. “Yeah, Papa,” she said, “I want this baby.”

 

________

 

Sento rubbed his face as he waited next to the comm suite for the return call. “I never really expected this kind of thing from Shara,” the Essin clan’s matriarch said. She was younger than Sento, a little bit, and her name was Titaba, and she’d known him twenty years.

“Me neither,” Sento said. He’d sort of absently figured someday Shara might have kids of her own, with or without a partner; he’d thought wistfully about it now and then, but he really hadn’t figured on it being _right now_ and with a lot of changing of minds like this. She’d always been the sort who knew what she wanted and went for it and stuck with it. But, he figured, he shouldn’t be surprised; her own origin had been remarkably similar to this, only even more confusing, and he supposed that was really just how babies happened. “I know I’m not getting the whole story, and it’s making her seem a lot flightier about this than she really is.” He waved his little portable comm. “What the fuck does she mean SITUATION ENTIRELY RENEGOTIATED, this is some insanity.”

“I mean, whatever it is,” Titaba said, “I can get you guys some decent gigs so you won’t starve trying to take care of a baby, you know all I’m gonna want in return is some quality baby-head-sniffing time.” She had no children of her own, but she had a lot of adoptive grandchildren from various sources, so this wasn’t surprising.

“They smell so good when they’re tiny,” Sento admitted; there’d been a four-month-old at his last destination port, belonging to the harbormaster, and he’d been pretty shameless about stealing the baby every chance he got for the several days he’d been there. Four months was a _great_ snuggling age. “I’m not really at a point where I can think about that aspect of it, though, you know?”

“I know,” Titaba sighed. “I know.” She tilted her head, and then her gaze sharpened and she said, “But I mean it, I’m gonna want to sniff that baby’s head a lot.”

The comm suite signaled an incoming request, and Sento sat up sharply. Titaba went smoothly and answered it. And in fact, it was the call they were waiting for, this time. (The last two had been bullshit other business.)

“Not enough bandwidth for visual,” Titaba said regretfully, and patched it through. “Hi, Shara, it’s Titaba.”

“Titaba,” Shara said, warm and delighted.

“You got some explaining to do, miss,” Titaba said. “Here’s your papa, I’ll leave you to it.”

Sento kissed her cheek in thanks, and leaned into the input to say, “You wanna tell me what Situation Entirely Renegotiated means, baby girl?”

“Oh Papa,” Shara said. “Yeah. I gotta tell the quick version, but it’s just-- we crossed wires, and I thought he was telling me to fuck off, and he thought I was breaking up with him and I guess I never said the word baby, so he didn’t realize what I was talking about, so it was just a whole situation. I don’t, I’m not very good at being pregnant, Papa, it makes it really hard to think clearly and I didn’t expect that.”

She wasn’t crying, at least, but Sento was skeptical. “So, what, then?”

“I handed him the custody abrogation form and he freaked out,” Shara said, “and it took a bunch of talking but we renegotiated, Papa, he wants to provide full support, he wants to be involved.”

“And what does he want from you? You gonna go marry him and stay at home for him?” Sento asked, trying hard not to sound as sarcastic as he felt. Shara had never been boy-crazy, or anything-crazy, and despite being 23 she usually had her shit pretty together. It was killing him that he was so far away from her for all of this. He knew if he’d been there it would have been resolved pretty instantly, and he’d know right away if she was bullshitting him about this boy, whoever he was.

“No,” Shara said. “He’s not here alone, though, he’s with his aunt, and she’s suggesting we meet here at the end of my contract, which is about a week after the end of yours, and a couple days before the end of theirs, and we hash out what’s going to happen. But she and his entire family are interested in an arrangement, Papa. And I know this must be making you crazy at this distance, with all these drastic changes of plans, but I promise it makes some sense from over here.”

“I gotta take your word for it,” he said. “So I should work through the rest of my contract and then figure on coming with you. What, after that?” They didn’t have a home base, really. They had some savings, they could scrape something together, but he was too old for raising a baby on the run like he’d raised Shara. At least he wasn’t alone this time, and he had an established career. The two of them could do it, he figured, but if this boy was good for anything, that’d make it a whole lot easier.

He still wasn’t really thinking about it like it’d really happen. It wouldn’t do to get excited about sniffing baby heads. He knew this shit was complicated and you had to think it through first. There were never any guarantees in life, and there were absolutely none with shit like this.

“We might wind up going back to his family’s home,” Shara said, “I’m not entirely sure but they have some kind of compound they all chip in for on some planet, and there are a few kids there already and they kind of all share? I don’t know, Papa, but it sounds okay.”

Sento rubbed his face. “You’re okay with this guy? That’s the upshot?”

“I am, Papa,” she said. “I’m gonna have to ask you to give him a chance, I haven’t told you one good thing about him because there hasn’t been a chance.”

Sento sighed. “Tell me his name, at least,” he said.

“Kes Dameron,” she said.

Dameron was familiar. “Why do I,” he said, and then it hit him, that holodoc about the dying planet. There’d been some interviews at the end after the romanticized dramatization. He’d just rewatched that in boredom on a long haul. “Lita Dameron, is she a relative?”

“Maybe?” Shara said. “Where would you have heard that name?”

“The Lost Kings,” Sento said. “She’s the lady at the end who gives the real fiery interview about how the dispossessed will be restored.”

“He is Oaxctli,” Shara admitted. “Probably, then.”

“Hoo boy,” Sento said. “Well, you always were kind of an overachiever.”

Maybe he could be excited about this. He’d have to wait until he met this boy to make up his mind. Being a grandpa would be pretty great, if the situation wasn’t bullshit. But he’d have to wait and see.

 

_____________

 

Kes sat in the corner of the cantina doing his best to be invisible. He hadn’t been sleeping well, and Shara was off on a long haul, and Norasol never came out to places like this. Etto had given up on him an hour ago, and had gone home to bed. But Kes knew he wouldn’t sleep, and nobody was bothering him-- it was a quiet crowd tonight-- so he just stayed where he was and worked his way through a couple more glasses of the horrible moonshine they cut with sugar water here and charged too much for. He wasn’t going to get drunk, the hangover wouldn’t be worth it, but he was going to take enough of the edge off to get some sleep. He didn’t have to be at work until the third hour, so he was going to try to sleep in.

“Heyyy,” someone said, too close, and sat down right next to Kes. “How’s it goin’, amigo?”

Kes leaned slightly away to look at the man, who was one of the dockworkers from the local cargo union. They were an uneven bunch, mostly natives of the planet the spaceport orbited-- some were reasonable guys, others were degenerates, still others were actively members of a local small-potatoes pirate gang, which was pretty much constantly on the outs with Fronteras. Kes stayed away from them, mostly, but he had made a point of having civil conversations with them where he could, because as a non-member of Fronteras he wasn’t automatically an enemy and figured the contacts could come in handy.

He tried not to make enemies. When they were drunk and smelled terrible, it was tricky.

“Just having a drink,” he said.

“Where’s your hot girlfriend?” the man asked, leering a little. “Didn’t dump you, did she?”

“Not yet,” Kes said. There were half a dozen of them, and from the look of them they were the ones who were pirates. He’d guess they’d just been out raiding. Some of them seemed to do it seasonally, and their organization had labor practices that reflected the seasonal availability. It made Kes’s skin crawl, a little, but it wasn’t really objectively any worse than Frontera’s illicit activities. The legal, aboveboard stuff was lucrative enough to bother with, and kept them at least plausibly respectable, but he knew they raided and pillaged and fenced and dealt pretty indiscriminately with the scum. Which was why he didn’t join the gang.

“Man, would you be obligated by honor to stab me if I told you how many impure thoughts I’ve had about that woman?” the man went on.

Kes rubbed his face. It was going to be one of those conversations. He didn’t have any backup here, and he only had a boxcutter in his pocket, nothing more than that. He wasn’t really prepared to throw down with a bunch of pirates. “I’m not obligated to do anything,” he said mildly, “but I guess I’d congratulate you on having a working pair of eyes.” He finished his drink and set the glass down, using the gesture to mask the once-over he gave the group. Six men, four definitely human, one Abednedo, one humanoid but with greenish skin and some scales on his cheeks. One of them was a guy he’d had a couple polite conversations with, a tall skinny human named Kurt who sometimes played guitar in the dormitory and generally seemed pretty witty, even when he was drunk as hell. Which was most of the time.

He made eye contact with Kurt, who visibly swayed back as he recognized Kes. Oh, they’d all been drinking, that was the perfect topper to this situation. “Hey,” Kurt said. “I know you.”

“We all know him,” one of the other guys said. “That’s Kes Dameron, he’s one of those yop Fronties. Hablo basico, maing?” It was a bad imitation of the nasal accent a lot of Outer Rim Ibericans had, but Kes didn’t. The slur was also a reference to Outer Rim Ibericans, an abbreviation of something lost to the mists of time, and it really, _really_ wasn’t friendly. Kes’s teeth ground together despite himself, and his heart kicked up with a sick thump.

They wouldn’t even be speaking to him if Etto were here, Kes knew that; Etto was a small wiry fellow, not at all imposing, but he had the Fronteras sigil on his cheekbone and these guys weren’t brave enough to fuck with that. Kes, though, he was unmarked, and therefore unprotected, at least visually.

Six of them, and he only had a boxcutter, there were no other Fronteras members in this bar, and the bartender was a local too. Nobody was going to back him up, not here. They probably only wanted to embarrass him, but fresh off raiding like this they might be a little full of themselves.

Well, Kes didn’t have much of value on him, so at least he wouldn’t lose much. He wasn’t going to be able to evade them if he ran; they were local, they knew all the byways, and six of them could easily surround him. Sitting here in total silence might only goad them. There really wasn’t much he could do. Whatever happened wouldn’t be pretty.

“Don’t be a fuckin’ idiot, Ek,” Kurt said, and cuffed the man who’d just spoken in the back of the head. “Of course he fuckin’ speaks Basic, wasn’t he just talkin’ to us?”

“I just mean he talks funny,” the other guy said, rubbing the back of his head reproachfully.

“Your _ass_ fuckin’ talks funny,” Kurt said. “Fuck off, Ek, this guy’s cool.”

“You’re defending him?” the Abednedo asked. “C’mon, he’ll probably stab you later.”

Kurt gave the Abednedo a toothy grin. “Maybe I _like_ that,” he said. “He’d probably be better at it than you, at least.” He came around and stuck his hand between Kes and the guy sitting too close next to him, and flapped it imperiously back and forth. “Budge over, Dop, I wanna sit down.”

There wasn’t room on the bench, so Dop got up, yielding the space with no complaint but an eye-roll. “You’re crazy, Vassan,” he said.

“I never said I wasn’t,” Kurt answered cheerfully. “What you drink, Dameron?”

The others lost interest and dispersed as Kurt got a round of drinks, and Kes pried his fingers out of the edge of the bench where he’d grabbed on real tight at some point, and let his breath out. “Hey, man, thanks,” he said, when the others were gone.

Kurt toasted him with his glass; he’d gotten some variant on the normal cocktail that had turned his a violent, toxic-looking blue. “It’s just a drink,” he said.

“The drink’s not what I meant,” Kes said.

“Ahh,” Kurt said dismissively, “they’re just a bunch of assholes. What are you doing out here so late? I had you pegged for the sensible sort.”

Kes shrugged. “Got a lot on my mind,” he said, “and we don’t got any ships comin’ in until half through the third hour tomorrow, so I figured I’d, you know, stay out a little.” He smiled a little bitterly. “Forgot what kinda town this is.”

Kurt took a drink. “Wellll,” he drawled, drawing it out a little, “they wouldn’t’a killed ya.” He bumped Kes’s shoulder with his. “It weren’t personal.”

“I know,” Kes said. But even stopping short of killing him, they’d’ve done plenty of mischief, and he had very little experience at keeping his head down and taking it so it didn’t get worse. He’d been taught about that; he’d spent his whole life carefully and conscientiously living as righteously as possible, for sheer plausible deniability. But even with that preparation, he didn’t know what he’d’ve done. He’d already been figuring which one’s eyes to go for first. It would have gone badly. He was a little shaky, behind his ribs. He took another drink to steady himself. So much for sleeping tonight.

“You ain’t from anywhere around here at all,” Kurt said suddenly, looking over at him. “I bet you get homesick.”

Kes nodded; he was, he wanted his mother. He’d been missing her terribly, lately. Norasol had been in touch with her, but the long-range comms were expensive so they just sent text comms back and forth, and with his trouble, he generally didn’t mess with that kind of thing too much. He was used to this, but that didn’t make it any easier, particularly not when he was under this much stress. “Contract’s up in like four, five weeks,” he said.

“Where’s home?” Kurt asked.

Kes shrugged. “We move around,” he said, “but we move around together.” Nobody told anybody where the homestead was. You had to be taken there to get there.

Having another pilot or two in the family would make that easier. But Kes was refusing to be mercenary about this.

“Who’s we?” Kurt asked. “You got a big family?”

“We were from Xicul,” Kes said, glancing over at him to see if he knew what that was. “It’s just, whoever’s left. Mostly my mom and whoever.” He shrugged.

“Is that the planet that they did that holodoc about?” Kurt asked. “With the Lost Kings or whatever?”

“Yup,” Kes said. He took another drink. It wasn’t the most accurate telling of the events, and it was horribly overdramatic, but it had been, at least, sympathetic. Mostly his cousins mocked it, but everyone lied when they pretended not to tear up at the scene where the carved rock wall collapsed with the kings’ faces. It wasn’t even accurate, but it was a really good scene. And his mother appeared, at the end of it, and had been allowed to give a short, impassioned speech that had been edited a little misleadingly but at least conveyed the bulk of the sentiment of their struggle for diplomatic recognition.

“Man,” Kurt said. “That’s-- that was a raw fuckin’ deal, was what that was.”

Kes nodded wordlessly. “The holo doesn’t tell you, though, that like half of the survivors wound up belonging to the mining company. A bunch of ‘em are slaves. We can’t get ‘em back, we’ve been trying, but--” He shrugged. Norasol was sure they were all dead, but Lita claimed to know they’d been stolen and sold. Kes wasn’t positive what he believed, but Lita’s version was a better story for occasions like this.

“Oh shit,” Kurt said. “That’s heavy.”

“Sure is,” Kes said.

“Do you remember it?” Kurt asked. “Like, when all that was happening?”

Kes shook his head. “Wasn’t born yet,” he said.

“Man, that’s so heavy,” Kurt said. He finished his drink and got another one, just as violently blue. Kes declined Kurt’s offer to buy him one like it; he was still working on this drink, which really ought to be his last. “So you didn’t break up with your hot girlfriend? I thought for sure that was why you were sitting here drinking alone.”

Kes laughed, because Kurt’s tone made it clear that he wasn’t being mean about the question. “No,” he said. “She’s on a long haul, be back next week.”

“What’s her name again?” Kurt asked. “Shara?”

“Shara,” Kes confirmed. “Shara Bey.”

“You been with her a while now,” Kurt said. “I only know that because she’s about the hottest thing on this base and literally everyone whines about it all the time. She never did really get around that much, but there used to be at least the idea that it was possible, but like, she just don’t even look at anybody else anymore, she don’t even come out dancin’ no more.”

“Almost half a cycle now,” Kes said, and he hadn’t really thought about it that way. It made him feel pretty good, to think of it that way.

“What’re you gonna do when your contract’s up?” Kurt asked.

Kes grinned, looking down at his hands. “Takin’ her to meet my mom,” he said.

“Really,” Kurt said, recoiling comically, and almost falling off the bench. “No shit! It’s serious, huh?”

Kes nodded, and he knew he was grinning like an idiot but he couldn’t exactly stop. “Yeah,” he said. He looked around, then leaned in a little, lowering his voice. “Reason I’m out so late is that I’m so nervous I can’t sleep, because her dad’s coming in at the end of the week and I’m scared to meet him.”

“Oh _shit_ ,” Kurt said, lowering his voice too.

“Yeah,” Kes said. “I’m so worked-up about it I can’t think straight. What if he doesn’t like me? I mean, what the fuck do I do then?” He shook his head.

“She got any other family?” Kurt asked.

Kes shook his head. “Just her and her Papa,” he said. “He’s, like. Her everything.”

Kurt whistled softly. “That’s a lotta pressure,” he said. “Good luck, man.”

Kes sighed, grimacing. “Think I’m gonna need it.”

 

After that, Kurt waved whenever he saw Kes, and Kes always smiled back. When they got the itinerary for Sento Bey’s inward-bound flight, and Kes found out it was going to a dock that the local union ran, not a Fronteras one, he went straight to Kurt and asked if he knew who was going to be handling it.

“Me,” Kurt said, looking at the itinerary. He looked real rough, hung-over and had a black eye, but he seemed cheerful apart from that. He took Kes’s datapad and scrolled through the information. “Yeah,” he confirmed in a minute, “that’s my crew’s shift. Looks like he’s got three containers. They getting forwarded, or is he gonna want ‘em here?”

“He’s only staying a couple days,” Kes said. “But I dunno.”

Kurt shrugged, and handed the datapad back. “Lemme know,” he said. “I’ll make sure nobody fucks nothin’ up. I know you gotta impress the guy.”

“I do,” Kes said. “Man I can’t even eat, I’m so nervous.”

“I don’t know nothin’ about nothin’,” Kurt said, “but I know your crew never fucks up, so I figure, that’s gotta be a good sign that you’re the kind of person who impresses somebody’s dad. I don’t know, really. I ain’t never impressed nobody.”

Kes laughed. “I appreciate the sentiment,” he said.

Kurt leaned in and lowered his voice. “Hey,” he said. “I got a question. And it’s not-- you don’t gotta answer. But like. I don’t know nothin’? But I heard a rumor, right?”

“What kind of rumor?” Kes asked, uneasy. They were standing in a byway, on a catwalk between two of the piers, and nobody was around, and he couldn’t imagine what on earth Kurt would be asking him about.

“Well, see,” Kurt said, “Shara, right, so like, I don’t know nothin’ about women, right, but one a’ the other guys, right, he’s got a family, and he sees her the other day, and he says you know, she looks kiiiinda... “ Kurt scrunched up his face. “Like, maybe, you’d say she’s kinda _glowing_ , a little. And like. Wearin’ her waistband higher, a little.”

They hadn’t really discussed this, Kes and Shara, and he really didn’t know what she’d want him to say. Used to be the kind of thing a woman would brag about, but the Imperials were so dismissive of anything feminine, and a lot of them seemed to believe a pregnant woman shouldn’t work. She wasn’t quite showing yet, but she was noticeably different than she had been.

(In bed, naked, Kes could tell that her midsection was thicker. Her clothes didn’t fit, she’d had to start wearing her trousers differently. He could put his head there and feel that she was swelling. She didn’t like to be touched in the same ways; she was changing, and it was the most exquisite thing Kes had ever witnessed, and he was utterly entranced, and he spent a lot of time with his head in her lap while she petted his hair and tolerated him talking to her belly. He also spent as much time as he possibly could putting his mouth on every inch of her body she would let him touch. Which was still most of it. So he intimately knew what parts of her were different already.)

He settled on putting his finger over his lips. “It’s a boy,” he said, and couldn’t help it, he grinned enormously.

Kurt laughed brightly, and clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s great,” he said. “Congratulations!”

“I’m pretty excited,” Kes said. “But you see why maybe I’m nervous about her dad. I don’t know what he thinks about this.”

“Was it not on purpose?” Kurt asked.

Kes shook his head. “No,” he said, “we didn’t really plan on it. But I mean, I’m _thrilled_.”

“I bet you are,” Kurt said, laughing. “Well, then, I know it’s extra important not to fuck up Papa’s luggage. We’ll get it sorted out, man, don’t you worry.”

 

____________

  


“Papa,” Shara cried, her face lighting up with a pure incandescent joy Kes had never seen before, and she dropped the bag she’d been holding and threw herself across the platform. Kes caught the bag out of midair because he’d anticipated the gesture, and so when he turned and saw Sento Bey for the first time, he did so with an armload of Shara’s belongings.

“Good catch,” Sento said, and his arms were full of Shara, which Kes thought was amusing enough to remark on.

“You too, sir,” he said, laughing, and it was easier to swallow down his jealousy-- Shara had never, would never look at _him_ like that-- in the face of how brightly Sento was laughing.

He was a wiry man, shorter than Kes and slight, his skin a shade or two darker than Shara’s, his bright white grin his most notable feature, with a halo of dark hair frizzed out around his head, just barely kissed with gray at the temples, and he kissed Shara’s face soundly, then fixed his keen gaze on Kes. “This is him, eh?”

“Kes Dameron, sir,” Kes said, slinging Shara’s bag over his shoulder and holding out his hand. Sento took it, stepping closer to inspect him.

“You’re taller than I thought,” Sento said, tilting his head back to look up.

“My feet reach the ground,” Kes said, an old joke he’d picked up stars knew where, and on impulse he added, “mostly,” and Sento laughed.

“I was prepared to be pretty suspicious of you,” Sento said, “but I like the look of you. Lots of vitamins, you look like good eating.”

“Papa,” Shara said, laughing too hard to be convincingly scandalized, though she tried. Kes wasn’t sure if it had been intended to be a sexual pun or a suggestion of cannibalism or what, but he was kind of used to not quite getting jokes, so he just smiled.

“You have luggage,” Kes said, because he’d gone over the manifest with Kurt and confirmed that, yes, S Bey had three containers to shift. “Was there anything you needed now or can we stack it?” He picked up Sento’s duffel bag, which the man had dropped when Shara came at him, and added it to Shara’s bag over his shoulder.

“Efficient,” Sento said.

“You have to be, sir,” Kes said, “the assholes they got on this dock’ll disappear your shit if you don’t.” He looked around; true to his word, there was Kurt, datapad in hand, supervising the unloading. Kurt caught his eye and grinned at him.

“Are we unloadin’ this or are we chuckin’ it into storage?” Kurt asked, coming over. “What was the final word, my man?”

“I don’t need anything off of it,” Sento said, “we can just forward it to the next ship we’re getting on.” His Basic was lilting but unaccented, easy on the ears.

“Storage it is,” Kurt said, and Kes held out his hand and Kurt pushed his knuckles briefly against Kes’s, in wordless agreement and acknowledgement.

They got Sento’s containers stacked and labeled with the ship they were destined for, in three days’ time if all went well-- and it would, it was a Fronteras-allied syndicate ship-- and made their way back to the spaceport’s sole decent cantina. Sento kept his arm around Shara the whole time, and Kes carried the bags and stayed out of the way.

He’d been so nervous about meeting Sento he’d barely been able to sleep for the last couple of days. He was half-convinced the guy was going to deck him. He had no idea what Shara had told him, at any point in any of this process; he knew Sento had been involved during the dark time when Shara had decided Kes was the devil, because where else had she gotten that awful custody agreement form?

Sento was the only person in this entire galaxy that Shara had ever loved, and Kes was desperately curious to know what he was like, and paralyzed with dread of what would happen if he couldn’t get along with the man.

But so far he seemed-- like he was just a guy. He had a more noticeable Outer Rim accent in Iberican than Shara did, but apart from that nothing stood out. He was small but sturdy, wiry and capable-looking, with keen bright eyes and a sly smile. Kes was still intimidated, but he could tell that if he weren’t so nervous, he’d probably like the guy.

The test would be Norasol, who was meeting them here.

Kes ran interference, got them a table in the corner, stowed the bags behind a chair, and tried not to be in the way. They hadn’t been speaking much, they’d just been holding onto one another, leaning into one another-- his chest was tight with jealousy because for all he’d never been alone in the world, not in his whole life, nobody had ever been so close to him as these two were to one another. His mother loved him but not like this. She had so much to do. When he came back from a long absence she’d embrace him, she’d kiss him, she’d tell him how happy she was, and they’d go on about their business. But this was different; they almost seemed to be communing, on a deeper level than verbal. They were past needing speech. It was beautiful, and Kes was almost sick with how jealous he was.

He got them drinks, ordered food, and came back to the table. Sento had his hand on Shara’s belly, which was thicker than before but not quite obvious yet.

“--really,” Sento said. “I couldn’t believe this was what you really wanted.”

“It is, Papa,” Shara said. “I can’t-- he’s good to me, and even if all he really wants from me is a baby, he’d be so good to that baby, you know?”

Kes considered waiting out of earshot, but the drinks would get cold, so he said, “Pardon me!” to a woman who wasn’t really in any danger of straying into his path, and she gave him a weird look and a wide berth, and both Beys looked up at him and smiled. Sento’s smile was polite, Shara’s brilliant.

Kes sat down next to Shara on the semicircular bench; her father was on the other side of her, and she was sitting right up next to him, so Kes left her some room. “They don’t have atole here,” he said, a little apologetic, “but the caf is all right, and I got Shara tea that she likes.”

Both of them blinked at him. “I don’t know what atole is,” Shara said, and Sento shook his head a little.

“Oh,” Kes said. He made a mental note: find out how to make caf and make sure to buy a stockpile of the ingredients. He was certain his mother didn’t keep the stuff in the house. “Ah, well, then it’s just as well.”

Shara slid a little toward him, smiling at him as she picked up her mug of tea. “Thanks,” she said, and he tried not to be obvious about his joy at her proximity. He did smile at her, probably like an idiot. She sometimes got this sort of resignedly fond expression on her face, and he knew it was when he was acting particularly like a smitten simpleton. But it was really hard, when she smiled at him like that, not to radiate it back at her.

“So tell me more about this family of yours, Kes,” Sento said, leaning forward and curling his fingers around the cup Kes had put in front of him. “Shara tells me you’re the last survivors of Xicul.”

“Oh,” Kes said, and fidgeted a little with his own cup; he couldn’t read Sento’s expression at all and had no idea what the man thought of it. Norasol would be better at this. There were situations where he let her do the talking, and this was one of them. “Well. I mean. It depends what you mean by last, really. But uh. Yeah, I mean. My mother was kind of a community leader, and so she’s collected as many of us as she could find around herself, and we’re trying to get diplomatic recognition as a collective, kind of, just so we’re not totally erased.”

“I don’t feel like the Empire is real big into that sort of thing,” Sento said, putting his chin in his hand, but he didn’t look skeptical or anything.

“No,” Kes said, “they’re, well, they’re really not. But. We have some powerful allies, sort of. And um. It mostly matters that we tried, I think?” He didn’t like the way his voice was going up and up, like he wasn’t sure. He was sure. He needed to sound sure. He cleared his throat. “We’re ah, we’re trying to establish a new colony somewhere, if we can get together enough money to buy land on a suitable planet. And if we at least have our existence recorded somewhere, as trying to get recognition, you know— we’re in the records, right, we exist, we’re not all dead.”

“I guess I see that point,” Sento said. “Well, it’s a noble effort.”

“It’s the only thing we know to do,” Kes said, a little reassured. “I mean, there were other survivors who scattered to the winds, you know, and gave up on that, and they just live how they live now, and that’s okay. And there are some who went missing that we’re still looking for, they’re maybe out there somewhere. But Mama has this dream that if she can get a new colony up and going, a lot of the ones who left will come back, maybe we can find some of the missing ones-- It’s not the most important thing she dreams, but it’s a thing, you know?”

“I know about wishing for family,” Sento said. “I also know that sometimes family is not as great as our dreams would have it.”

Kes nodded thoughtfully. He’d heard just a hint of that, from Shara, about her mother’s sister, and so on. That awful custody abrogation agreement had come from somewhere, after all. “Well,” he said. “Sometimes there are people you don’t want to be close to. My father doesn’t come around a lot. He’s welcome when he does but we also don’t leave a real big space for him and we don’t miss him a lot when he’s gone. It’s okay. It’s not a lifestyle for everybody, we know that. We all have to work very hard. But it’s important to us.”

It felt strange to lie, but he had literally never spoken a word of truth about his father’s actual fate, and it would have felt even stranger. He wouldn’t know how to explain what had really happened to him, or why they pretended they didn’t know about it.

“You said your aunt was here with you,” Sento said.

Kes nodded. “She is,” and he looked around as if she’d materialize at any moment. Well, her shift had ended a little while ago, hadn’t it? He glanced at his chrono. “She’ll be along any minute now. She might be waiting to make a dramatic entrance.” He realized as he said it that Sento didn’t know her, and wouldn’t understand what that meant. “I mean. Not really. I’m joking. But Norasol has kind of a way with timing.”

“You’re close with your aunt?” Sento asked.

Kes wasn’t sure what the right answer to that would be. “Well,” he said. “She’s. More than my aunt, really? She raised me, a lot more than my father did.”

“Is she your mother’s sister, or your father’s?” Sento asked.

It had until that moment never occurred to Kes to wonder about that in any capacity. “I, uh,” he said, puzzling that over. “Actually I don’t, uh. I don’t think she’s a blood relative?” Surely she wasn’t, unless maybe distantly. He never had considered it, but he knew on some level that she was or had been his mother’s lover. And the explanation stuck in his mouth strangely, as it suddenly struck him to worry that saying _my mother’s lover_ would somehow be unacceptable to Sento. There were cultures that frowned on women having lovers except to procreate, and surely Sento wasn’t from one, but Kes just didn’t know. Shara so rarely spoke of her own past or self or people.

“You never thought about it before,” Sento observed.

“No,” Kes said. “I have been raised in a difficult world with many uncertainties but Norasol has always been there, and my mother, and a few other people have always come back to us, wherever we wound up. I have never had to think about it.”

“It sounds nice,” Shara said, nonchalant, but there was a note Kes hadn’t heard before in her voice, and he slid her a look and realized she was on-edge, watching her father for a reaction. It struck him with a strange little twist in his stomach that she wanted her father to approve of him. She was nervous too.

“It does,” Sento said, and he was looking past Kes at someone.

Well, it was probably Norasol. “Is she right behind me making faces, or what?” Kes asked.

“I wouldn’t make faces behind your back,” Norasol said. “I was just waiting for a gap in the conversation. You know I hate to interrupt.”

Kes made his face as blank as he possibly could, and happened to catch Sento’s eye; Sento looked delighted; he grinned broadly and sat forward. “You must be Norasol,” he said.

“Norasol Yauta,” she said, and shook his hand. She had changed her shirt into one of her blouses from home, brightly-colored and hand-woven, and she had combed and rebraided her hair so it was glossy and black as a bird’s wing instead of its usual plasti-dust frazzle after a long shift. She’d made an effort, Kes realized; she wanted to impress Sento too.

It moved him, to realize that. She wanted this to work, despite her grumbling and dire predictions. Knowing that made something go a little more solid behind his ribcage.

“Sento Bey,” Sento said. “Pleased to meet you.”

“Kes is not always good at showing himself to his own advantage,” she said. “He is much smarter than that. He knows fine well what everyone’s blood lineage is. It’s all written down, now, even our missing ones. I’m his mother’s fourth cousin, as it happens, which by our reckoning is not a close relationship at all. But we have a lot of family ties that have no particular connection to blood relationships, and that’s my relationship to him. I’ve been in his household since before he was born, so I’m his auntie.”

“I like that,” Shara said softly.

“That’s what we want for this child,” Norasol said. “We don’t want to own him, don’t want to control you. We just want to love him. And you too, if you can find a home with us.”

It was better than Kes could have said it, and more to the point. “That sounds better-considered than what I’d been envisioning,” Sento said.

“We don’t have much,” Norasol said. “But what we have is each other. Which sounds like something out of a cheesy holonovela but it’s true.”

“No, no,” Sento said. “I like the sound of that.”

 

_______________

 

“Do you like him, Papa?” Shara asked, wishing she didn’t sound like such a little girl. But the question was burning her, and she needed him to answer.

Sento laughed, and set his bag down next to the door. “Can I get in the door first?”

“The door already shut,” she said crossly, but she had to laugh too. “I’ve been as patient as I can manage.”

Sento came over and wrapped his arms around her. They’d already embraced a lot, it wasn’t like this was the first time he’d done this, but it was still such a profound relief to have his arms around her, his familiar body wrapped comfortably around hers, her own portable home. “My dear,” he said. “The most important thing is that I know you like him.”

“But do _you_ like him, Papa,” Shara asked quietly, sticking her nose in the crook of his neck.

“He’s a sweet boy,” Sento said, “and very capable, and it’s plain that he cares for you a great deal.”

“That’s not a yes, Papa,” she said.

“It’s not a no either, baby girl,” he said. “I hardly know him yet. I imagine I will like him a lot. But I don’t know him yet.”

 

________________

 

“I hope my daughter doesn’t eat your nephew alive,” Sento said, setting Norasol’s drink down on the table as he slid into his seat.

“Ay,” Norasol said, “Xacristo, I know.” She sighed, and rubbed her face. “He’s stronger than he looks but most of his strength lies in being really stubborn about things.”

“Mm,” Sento said, “well, so is she.”

“I’m worried he’ll use her to tear himself apart,” Norasol said. “He is constitutionally incapable of dating casually. He cannot sleep with anyone without giving them his entire heart. Which isn’t bad unto itself, it’s very sweet, but he has very little concept of self-defense.”

Sento sighed. “Well,” he said. “Regardless of whether they’re any good for one another, they will make a beautiful baby.”

“Oh,” Norasol said, “that they will.” She clinked her glass against his. “Even if it all goes wrong between them, at least we’ll have that.”

“I have been trying very hard,” Sento said, propping his cheekbone against his knuckles, “not to get too excited about it, until I knew how everything would shake out. But, you know, I am extremely fond of babies.”

“Did you raise Shara by yourself?” Norasol asked. “She is very close-mouthed, I haven’t really devoted any energy to prying much out of her because I thought you might be an easier mark.”

“I sure am,” Sento said, grinning. “I’m the easiest mark in the world, I’ll talk your ear off about my baby girl. I did raise her by myself, and I didn’t know what I was doing, but I have _so many_ holopics. She was such a cute baby, she was maybe the cutest baby ever to exist. Are you ready?”

“I’m ready,” Norasol said, clapping her hands together and bouncing in her seat as Sento got his datapad out. He started off with the single best picture of baby Shara ever: two years old, hair in fluffy pigtails, naked as the day she was born except for a pair of oversized dark glasses whose frames were studded with bright pink sparkling gemstones, standing on the nose of a parked freighter. Norasol gave a tiny shriek as she beheld the image. “Oh stars, you’re absolutely right, she was _adorable_.”

“I wasn’t kidding,” Sento said. “I’m not just saying that because she’s mine.”

“I can’t one-up this,” Norasol said. “We spent too much of our time trying to be respectable.” She pulled out her own datapad, and countered with an image of a beautiful, wide-eyed child of three or four, looking solemn and earnest, dressed in fancy clothes and clutching a hat in his hands. “Wait, no, hang on.” She pulled up another one, of a curly-headed baby possibly around a year old, sitting in a mud puddle, face filthy, grinning with only two visible teeth.

“Oh he was _really cute_ ,” Sento said.

“He was sort of weird-looking until he was about one,” Norasol said, “but he grew out of it.”

“He’s really pretty now,” Sento said. “Pretty enough that I was really worried at first that maybe that was all Shara was really after.”

“He’s very pretty,” Norasol conceded. “And he’s a hard worker. And he has more common sense than I’ve let on about. He really is a good boy.”

“Shara’s strong-willed but she’s responsible,” Sento said. “I think they’ll be all right.”

Norasol flipped meditatively through her holopics. She pulled up one of a skinny, gangly boy of about seven or eight, solemn again, dressed in formal clothes, a black jacket with bright embroidery, black trousers with stripes down the sides, standing next to a smaller girl in elaborate Core Worlds court finery, her brown hair caught up in elaborate braids across her head. She was smiling, ethereal and a little smug, all in white and gold, eyes darted over to look sidelong at the boy. The boy was identifiably Kes, hair cropped short and eyes very dark. He looked worried.

“This is Alderaan,” Norasol said. “That’s the Organas’ daughter, Leia.”

“Fancy,” Sento said, impressed. He wasn’t up on many public figures, but he did know who Bail Organa was. Bail had spoken out beautifully against the Empire’s policy of monolingualism, much good had it done.

“I don’t seem to have any holos of him smiling,” she said. “I promise he smiles.”

Sento countered with a holo of Shara, twelve and gangly and frizzy-haired, seated behind the controls of a starship of some kind, and she was scowling at the ‘corder. “She wasn’t that difficult a teenager,” Sento offered.

“Oh,” Norasol said, “Kes has pretty much been a perfect angel his entire life.” She pulled up a holo of Kes at about five, sitting on the lap of a smiling young man with a wild mop of curly hair. Kes looked somber, wide-eyed as usual, bare feet dirty. “That’s his father. Did he tell you about his father?”

Sento considered his answer. “He said he doesn’t come by much,” he said carefully, sensing that there was a story there.

Norasol nodded. “That’s the party line, we always say that.” She leaned in, and lowered her voice. “He got involved in one of the factions that’s rebelling against the Empire,” she said, just above a whisper. “They executed him as a saboteur, about five or six years ago. We pretend we don’t know this, because the Oaxctli are officially not a politically-active entity.”

“Oh,” Sento said, surprised. He hadn’t expected anything of the sort.

“We keep our distance from any rebel factions,” Norasol said. “Regardless of any of our personal feelings. You understand?”

“I do,” Sento said. “Makes sense.”

“So we pretend,” Norasol said. “As far as we know, Molo is out there somewhere, being slightly shiftless, maybe in trouble somewhere, or maybe he got over his troublesome phase, you know?”

“I see,” Sento said.  
“He never really was troublesome,” Norasol said. “He was never really shiftless either. But he didn’t-- he didn’t raise Kes, at all.” She sighed. “He was always-- more of an activist. We didn’t think it was safe to have him around.”

“Kes knows this?” Sento asked. Kes hadn’t even hesitated with the story, really; he’d looked slightly pained for a moment, but it had tripped off his tongue pretty fluidly. Sento had assumed the pained expression was relevant to the story.

Norasol nodded. “He’s-- Lita includes him in things a lot. Even when he was pretty little, he wasn’t just along with her on that diplomatic stuff to be cute and sympathetic. She has always made sure he was informed about the issues, and knew what was safe to discuss with whom.”

“Lita’s his mother,” Sento filled in.

“Yes,” Norasol said. She flicked through her holopics and found one, a woman with dark glossy hair cradling a very small infant to her chest and looking up into the ‘corder with a mysterious, pleased smile. She was beautiful, and looked happy. Sento recognized her as the woman from the holodoc about the lost kings; she’d been young there too. Norasol pulled up another holo, which was a gangly teenaged Kes with his diminutive mother tucked up against his side, beaming up at him. He was looking at the ‘corder with an expression that harked back to all those wide-eyed earnest pictures of his childhood, but his mouth was at least curved a little, in a subdued little smile. “I really don’t have any holos where Kes is smiling. I promise he does.”

“I’ve seen him smile,” Sento said mildly. “But he’s still waters, isn’t he?”

“Still waters,” Norasol said, eyebrows drawing together in puzzlement.

“Still waters run deep,” Sento said. He reconsidered the metaphor. “Maybe I fucked that up. You know, though. You can’t tell by looking at him what’s going on in his head.”

“He’s a very honest person,” Norasol said, prickling a little.

“I’m not doubting that,” Sento said. “But if you expect to know what he’s thinking just by looking at him, you’ll be fooled, that’s all.”

Norasol considered that. “I wouldn’t have thought that,” she said. “But. Well, he has spent a lot of time with diplomats.”

“He’s no fool, is all,” Sento said. He finished his drink. “Well, we won’t be bored.”

“That we won’t,” Norasol said, and finished her drink too.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to post something for my birthday to cheer me up about just blowing every self-imposed posting deadline ever, and this cooperated by being finish-able.  
> You all encouraging me over on Tumblr about the Super Sad Kes's Dad headcanons are evil. (Same handle on Tumblr as here, if you want to join in, though the fic snippets are few and the unflattering selfies and photos of my cat or niece are many.)
> 
> Hopefully this is me back from unintentional hiatus. I spent a month on the farm and it turns out I can't get a lot of writing done there. Believe it or not, I had to write this to find some crucial components for chapter 6 of whatever that story's called. I'm almost there.


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